Preview of Future Technologies

An event like TechFest is a feast for any technology enthusiast. Technologies

varying from next generation of social networking to new age user interactions

that remind you of some sci-fi movies and many other innovating projects were

demonstrated at this year's event.

This year's event was held on Feb 24th at Microsoft Campus in Redmond, where

the researchers demoed around 40 projects that showed the glimpse of what

tomorrow's computing would be like. Addressing the media at the event, Craig

Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer said 'Research is part

of Microsoft's DNA and we're committed to this investment in research to enable

our researchers and developers to continue advancing the technology for

challenging societal problems and pushing the boundaries of computing in

exciting ways.' Alongside Mundie, Rick Rashid, the senior vice president of MS

Research also reaffirmed the company's commitment towards basic research that

has benefited several Microsoft products and said that 'Research projects at

TechFest are the technological hints that the future holds. We've shown touch

technologies in past which are now part of Microsoft Surface computing, while

artificial intelligence projects now enhance the Windows Live search.' And its

true, that all projects that are showcased at the event do not end up as a whole

new branded product. Some projects get incorporated into existing or an upcoming

product and some projects go back to the drawing board for further development

or starting anew.

Rick Rashid and Craig Mundie addressing the media persons at the TechFest event.

This year at the TechFest, the focus seemed to be on harnessing social

networking better and the expansion of Microsoft's Surface technology. The

projects ranged from user interface technologies to new datacenter technologies

that may reduce the costs of datacenters. Here are some of the interesting

demos:

SecondLight: A new surface computing technology that can project

images and detect gestures in mid-air above the display surface. The display

surface itself supports the multi-touch interactions. The mid-air projection of

images and detecting gestures is somewhat similar from a sci-fi movie like

'Minority Report'. It was the most crowded booth at the event. SecondLight opens

a whole new realm of User Interaction, and we have talked more about it and

other UI technologies in a separate story in this issue.

Automated Front-Desk Receptionist: Imagine a life-like on-screen avatar on a

computer screen that emulates the tasks of a front-desk receptionist like

registering visitors and even engage in conversation with visitors. This project

know as “Situated Interaction” explores the ways how human and machines can

interact.

Researchers of MSR India demonstrate how books can be digitized and with a projector, to the whole class.

The project aims at interactive systems that can reason about their

surroundings and interact with natural flow of everyday tasks and activities.

The system integrates various AI technologies like speech-recognition, person

detection and tracking, intention recognition and modeling, all these into a

conversational framework that can engage in interactions with one or multiple

persons.

The system can well be suited for a hotel reservation desk where visitors can

do check-in for their rooms and also inquire about their booking status for

services they asked for like cab booking.

Technology for Rural Education: While other projects demonstrated

technologies of higher level, this project from Microsoft Research India focused

on using the lowest level of technology that would be required to bring the

education to the rural areas. They demonstrated how a single PC in a classroom

can be used for better student interaction with the technology-naive teacher. In

another education project, they showed how several books can be digitized and

played on a standard DVD, using the fast-forward button to move from page to

page. Schools that cant afford to have many books can still have a library in

form of such DVDs. The students can take such DVDs back home and view them, as

even in rural areas more than 70% people have access to TVs and DVD players.

Even in a class, such digitized book in form of a DVD can be shared by an entire

classroom on a TV. Thus with this limited technology that is pervasive in rural

areas today, education can be delivered effectively.

Low-Power Processors in Datacenter: This demo showed a prototype dataceneter

based on Intel Atom processors, which resulted in offering 33 to 50 percent of

performance of a hig-perfromance processors based datacentrers but consumed just

upto 10 percent of the power. This way the costs of datacenters can be brought

down and also huge energy can be saved.

Christian Borgs, Dy. MD, MSR, New England explains the Gale-Berlekamp Light-Bulb game to demo time-approximation for approximating problems within a given precision.

There were some other projects like 'Video stitching', whereby in real-time

basis the video generated and streamed via mobiles can be stitched together to

create a larger frame. This can potentially be used for purpose of citizen

journalism or even for social multimedia-sharing sites. There was a Light-Bulb

game also which challenged visitors to minimize the number of lit light bulbs by

flipping switches. The idea behind was to stress on how algorithms can be useful

in such calculations.

Despite being showcased at the event, these innovating technologies aren't

guaranteed to see the daylight in form of a product, but may eventually be

integrated in some existing lineup of products of Microsoft.

The author was hosted by Microsoft Research at Bellevue for the event.